A contact center is no longer a place to just handle calls. Today, there is click-to-chat, email, text, callbacks, and all the digital channels customers use. The importance of customer experience and loyalty has become more important than ever, and technology is improving and changing rapidly. Our goal at NiCE CXone is to help our customers build lasting relationships with their customers because we understand the value and importance of satisfying customers.
For our second Behind the Scenes blog article, I met with Alyse Chiariello, Senior Director of CXone Customer Marketing and Events to give us exclusive insights into how her team helps build lasting relationships with our customers by giving them all the education they need on products, find more value in our products, expand their use of CXone applications, or complete the piece of the puzzle they need with the latest and greatest tools to have the best-in-class customer centric environment. They help our customers shine and meet their objectives within their organization. Continue to read below on how Alyse and her team give our customers the opportunities to shine, grow, and achieve their goals.
Meet Alyse Chiariello, Senior Director of CXone Marketing
If you could do anything for eight hours a day for the rest of your life, what would you do? Alyse’s answer would probably be doing the right thing for the customer. She has always loved marketing, all her degrees are in marketing, and she has been in the contact center software industry for 16 years. At her first contact center software provider job, she started working with customers and hearing their passion for the company’s product, and she was wowed. She never thought of a company product like that. The customer’s passion built her passion to help customers. She went on to build great relationships with her customers, visiting contact centers and doing walk-throughs onsite. Seeing the positive impact that the product technology had at the contact center, Alyse was able to learn to think like the customer, understand them, and she was drawn into customer marketing.
Today, Alyse leads the CXone Customer Marketing and Events Team that she has built over the last few years. Her typical day starts with many meetings, looking at stats of current campaigns, and reviewing the data to understand how her team is helping our customers. The team looks at the messaging they are communicating to customers, informing customers of the latest industry events, and planning future customer webinars.
Alyse draws upon her own experience and the customer point of view to think like the customer. Her team completes customer content - case studies and videos - to help the customer, but also to see what the customer sees and understand the issues they are trying to solve. With all the recent changes in our industry, Alyse challenges her team to open their eyes and see all the potential of the different things they can touch, learn, and grow on. She would describe her role as exciting, challenging, and innovative. Her team gets the opportunity to do a lot of stuff they have never done before.
Her biggest professional achievement is being part of a company that believes in understanding the customer and one that has allowed her to build the department into a full customer demand generation, references, and user conference department. Her biggest achievement overall is getting her kids off to college. She is proud to have moved in her last young adult into college.
Seeking opportunities so our customers shine in their roles
Alyse loves giving people the opportunity to speak so they can shine and grow professionally. One time she had a senior customer who had a personal objective to speak at a conference because she was so shy. Alyse called her up and asked if she wanted to speak at an upcoming conference. The call happened right after the customer’s professional objectives were put into place and she told Alyse, “You’re going to help me achieve my first objective in the first month they were given to me this year, but I need guidance.” Alyse felt good helping her out and letting her shine. The funny thing is after that first presentation, the customer ended up speaking at other events on a lot of different topics for the next three years. This is part of what the Customer Marketing team does, they seek opportunities that give our customers an opportunity to achieve goals of their own and to become superstars.
Another great story Alyse told me about is when a customer comes to her team with a lot of numbers and stats that they have collected but are not sure how to present to their leader. The customer asks for help and guidance creating a case study presentation the customer can take back to their leadership team and show why the product is working or why they should branch out with a new product because of the results. The Customer Marketing Team understands all the time and money the customer put in to implement the new product, and they help clarify the customers data that portrays the success and achievement of business objectives.
Building these relationships with all our customers allows the Customer Marketing Team to guide, support, answer questions, and provide educational resources like a Power Hour customer webinar so the customer gets the information they need to solve the problems within their organization. At the end of the day, the customer take the information and educational resources back to their organization, and they shine!
Educating the customer through customer marketing events
When working with a customer, the Customer Marketing Team’s first step is to interview the customer to determine if the customer is interested in getting involved in the Reference Program. Alyse and her team focus on learning about the customer’s day job, understanding what their interests and problems are, and if they are willing to share their business learnings as part of a case study. The team takes the time to talk about CXone products, refer customers to Power Hours, or provide suggestions for products that they can take back to their organization and present to their leadership team. This gives that customer ways to have more visibility within their organization so that they can become a superstar.
Alyse told me o about a customer who was collecting a lot of stats that they never thought of pulling together for a case study and asked her team how they could use all the data in a presentation for their organization’s leadership team. Alyse told the customer to take that the completed case study to their leadership team so leadership can see the before and after. This kind of interaction with potential customers not only teaches Alyse and her team new things, but also builds a relationship with a potential customer who is going to make a positive impact within their organization.
Another great educational resource the Customer Marketing Team has created are Power Hours, which are webinars that cover many timely topics including best practices, tips, and tricks for using CXone. This resource ensures our customers have all the information they need to use our products to their full extent. The Power Hours help our customers get answers to questions they may have about a product they are using or exploring, understand product benefits, and how to take full advantage of the technology in their contact center.
Alyse’s team understands that a customer is tied up in their world at their everyday job. It’s almost like they are in a siloed environment where a customer is trying to solve a problem to improve their customer experience and metrics, but they don’t take a moment to step back and see what other strategies could help them perform better. By attending a user conference, a Power Hour, or going to an industry event, our customers get the opportunity to hear others talk about their own experiences in the contact center. At these events, our customers learn how to take workforce engagement management and do it better, they get ideas on how to staff their teams better, or how to handle remote learning. Industry as well as the annual user conference, Interactions, take the customer out of their day-to-day routine and into an environment where they can look at things differently and focus on what they can do to improve many areas in their contact center space. Industry events or conferences are opportunities to learn about the latest and greatest trends, best practices, and insights that other companies are seeing success in.
The ultimate goal of all customer marketing activities and events is to help our customers improve themselves as a leader of a contact center, improve their company, and deliver great customer experiences
Innovating for the future
Before COVID-19, virtual conference platforms were never touched, and now this was something that had to be done to host customer conferences and industry events. When the pandemic hit in 2020, customer marketing activities had to transition 100% to virtual. The Customer Marketing Team had to plan the largest user conference with thousands of attendees on a virtual platform. Even though it was virtual, it had to be engaging and provide a similar experience to the one that was hosted in person. This transitioned allowed Alyse and her team to roll up their sleeves, learn some new things, and grow as individuals.
Innovation is not new in the contact center industry. Alyse has seen many of the changes over the years. Before, contact centers were a place for customers to call and speak with an agent. But now it’s become such an important place where our CXone customers are capturing so much information that can be used to improve the customer experience. We are seeing that contact centers are striving to improve the customer experience they are providing. As the customer service technology evolves through artificial intelligence and social media, companies must pivot to meet consumer expectations and create a seamless experience across all channels. Read more information in our 2020 CX Transformation Benchmark survey.
Currently, Alyse is working on a new project that is building on the foundation to better understand our customers, know when to reach out to them at the right time with the right message, and increase customer engagement. Alyse has built a strong Customer Marketing team with a focus on, “Our ultimate goal is to retain our customers, educate customers on the value of our products, and help them add on to their product suite to provide them with a robust customer platform.”
Check out our customer success stories and how they have created a positive impact in their organizations. We also have a great resources library on our website with information about new research, best practices, customer experience technology and trends.
